“Where away, so late in the autumn?” inquired a friend, who saw me starting out.
“Down the bay, blue-fishing!” I exclaimed. “Just the real time for it.”
“Ah? Well, good-by, then! Rather too cold sport for me, though!”
Therefore, I saw Jessie again—and yet again after that. Why should I not confess it?—or, after what I have already told, what is there left for me to confess, at all? For now, at last, I began to acknowledge to myself that it was not mere friendship or esteem I felt, but, rather, the more overpowering passion of real love. Gone, like a thin veil of vapor, were all my sophistries about a limited Platonic interest; my dread of incongruous association; my resolves against possible rashnesses; my fear of the world or its senseless gossip; my prudence, or my self-restraint! These all seemed to vanish in a day; and, yielding myself, slavishly, a willing captive to bright eyes and silvery tones, upon one fine morning I passed the Rubicon of safety, and offered her my hand and heart. But, to my sore dismay, she only softly shook her head.
“You do not love me, then?” I murmured. I spoke not merely with sorrow and disappointment, but with something of wounded pride—feeling mortified that she had not at once accepted my devotion. Certainly, it had seemed to me, all along, that I was not disagreeable to her; and there was no doubt that in her manner, at least, she had always cordially welcomed my approach, and taken pleasure in my company.
“I do not know—I hardly yet can tell!” she faintly said, drawing her hand from mine. “To me, you are my best and dearest friend; perhaps, the only one whom I can really call my friend. I know how glad I always feel when you come hither; how lonely I am while you stay away. But this I do not think is love—the real, true love which I should wish to feel.”
“But can it never be?” I pleaded.
“How can I tell? It might come to that, at last; and yet—” She ceased, and there came over her face a strange, dead look at the sea before her—a straining gaze, as though she would fix her eyes far beyond, in another hemisphere, oblivious of the present.
“Yet tell me, Jessie, have I a rival? This, at least, you might let me know. I will not go further, nor will I ask his name.”
For a moment she did not answer: still sitting, with that strange, rapt, straining gaze, and with an unconscious, mechanical motion, rolling the little sand pebbles down the side of the rock.